PDO doesn't stand for anything, but that doesn't mean we can't learn anything from adding up the overall shooting and save percentages for a team at even strength. A layman's explanation for 'PDO' and why we use it can be found here over at the Backhand Shelf. Basically, if a team is playing with a PDO number way higher than 1.000, they're producing above their expected output. If a team is playing with a PDO number below 1.000, they're producing below their expected output. Over the course of a long season, the number will generally correct itself.

I've also included team Fenwick Close % numbers, pulled from behindthenet.ca as well. Treat it as a proxy for the amount of time each team spends with the puck. Any team with a rate over 50% is pretty good and should make the playoffs in an 82-game season unless something goes horribly wrong.

Not a good week to be a fan of Buffalo or Tampa Bay. Both teams are producing above their potential but both are four and eight points out of the playoff race with a lot of teams to leap up, making a post-season appearance unlikely. Seems like a shame to waste a good year.

San Jose were between 51.5% and 52.0% in Fenwick Close all season. They gut the bottom half of their roster made up of poor puck-possession players, and have had a damn good week. Turns out Dougie Murray may be the anti-Jeff Carter, but if San Jose keeps up this play, I'm wondering if they might challenge in the Western Conference. Could be a sleeper team deserving to be named along with Los Angeles and Chicago.

I believe St. Louis should be among those ranks too.

The idea that the Boston Bruins are doomed because they're 1-4-1 in one-goal games against Montreal and Pittsburgh is quite flawed. This is an elite team that hasn't got the percentage support the Penguins have had this season. Hopefully Patrice Bergeron is back soon. Rather, hopefully Patrice Bergeron is healthy soon, and doesn't play before he's 100%. Bergeron is probably the best two-way centreman in the league, and the elite two-way centreman is the power-hitting shortstop of hockey. Nice to have a guy who can generate offence and be a perennial Selke candidate.

Anaheim beat Los Angeles last night. Took them to a shootout, though. Ducks gonna be Ducky, and they'll probably hang on to the 2-seed.

The cure for Philadelphia's .896 team save percentage was Steve Mason, apparently.

Cam Charron is a BC hockey fan that writes about hockey on many different websites including this one.

NYR and NJD have been tracking each other pretty consistently on these charts most of the season it seems. Both have continued to be in the 53% Fenwick range for a while now - which is Top 5 in the Eastern Conference...and neither can score. [Hey, aside...remember when David Clarkson was the Best Power Forward in the Game for like a week?]. Over the few weeks, the difference is that Lundqvist is back to being all world and the Rangers are in good shape for a playoff spot... the Devs goalies arent, and they are in good shape for an early spring.

PDO normally evens out across the span of a full-length season. Obviously the NHL in a shortened season, meaning that with a smaller sample size of games there's going to be much more variance. I have no doubt that in a full 82 game season, the numbers for Toronto and Anaheim would've eventually evened out. Teams can't hide behind inflated percentages forever.

Even an 82-game season isn't long enough to "guarantee" regression in the same way that baseball, with a 162-game season, can. It's somewhat more likely in hockey that teams can buck the long-term trends. Some people have used that as a reason why advanced statistics in hockey are useless, but all it means is that they're a rougher tool with a bigger margin for error.

Keaton's point remains true. Advanced statistics in a 48-game season, just like advanced statistics in a 28-game postseason, are far more subject to variance and luck than a normal 82-game season.

Do you think a FIP like stat would work in Hockey, for Goaltenders? If you didn’t know, FIP is a stat in baseball that measures only the pitcher’s ability (the fielders aren’t factored in); the parameters for FIP are walks, strikeouts, and homeruns, as all these parameters only deal with the pitcher and the batter, and the catcher. This makes it more reliable than stats like ERA where a good pitcher can be deemed average, based on having a high ERA, due to a bad fielding defense.

I imagine it would be a lot harder in Hockey, as it is consistently a free-flowing sport (whereas baseball is a relatively static sport with a bunch of one-on-one matchups). It would be great to differentiate someone like Craig Anderson from someone like Ilya Bryzgalov without having to say “small sample-size” or “The defense prevents teams from getting clear shots on goal, which helps the goalie”.

I think there was a paper at Sloan last year about this--defense-independent save percentage.

There are two big issues that jump out to me, both related to data tracking. One, things like screens and lateral passes resulting in a shot aren't tracked since player and puck movement isn't tracked. And second, NHL shot location data is abominably bad.

For what it's worth, the Ducks have started to regress. They were scoring over 3 goals a game to start the season and posted a 2.4 mark in March. They've also lost more games in the passed 11 games, 5, than they did in the first 28 games of the season, 3. It's been a slow and steady decline, and they'll run out of race track before it turns into something horrible, but they are regressing.

And I think part of the reason why it doesn't seem like they are is because Chicago has gone through a recent relatively rough patch, too. Anaheim has kept pace with Chicago recently, but the two of them have both come back to the pack--if Pittsburgh wins tonight, the Pens move into 2nd overall behind Chicago, and Montreal and Boston could catch up to Anaheim, too.